Between the Lines
by phineyj
Summary: What does the future hold for them?


**Author's Note: This is a companion piece to my earlier fic 'Endgame', and in the same series as 'What You Wish For' and 'These Foolish Things' - it's the missing piece of the jigsaw, if you like.**

**Between the Lines **

You have been alone so long that it seems normal. Both your sisters are married, and nearly all your friends. Even your younger brother has been with his boyfriend now for twelve years, and the two of them behave more like an old married couple than anyone else in the family does. Wilson likes to joke that you're married to the hospital, and it's true in many ways; it's the first thing you think of when you wake up in the morning and the last you turn over in your mind before you go to sleep at night.

It's not your fault; the circumstances of your life seem to have conspired to make things this way. At high school, you had to work as hard as you could to have the chance of getting into the colleges you were interested in; ones none of your teachers thought a pupil from your school had a chance of aiming at. You proved them wrong. At med school, you were doing your best to reward your aunt's confidence in you, backed with her money. And it turns out there's no club for female Deans of Medicine; there aren't enough of them. You've done better than anyone could have predicted, so if that means you're permanently single, maybe that's the price you have to pay. That's what you tell yourself, anyway.

------

The first time you meet Lisa Cuddy, she's sitting across from you, behind her impressively shiny desk. It's the beginning of October 1997, and the position of Head of Oncology at PPTH isn't vacant, exactly, but it's common knowledge in the Princeton medical community that Dr Chakrabarti is a sick man himself and is negotiating for early retirement. It's the first time you've been interviewed by a woman and you note down her power jewelry, insistent cleavage and slightly crooked smile. She can't be more than a couple of years older than you, but she exudes the sort of authority you still struggle for, despite having made attending sooner than any of your classmates.

You take the job, as you both know you will, and you develop a good working relationship. It would be easy, that first week or two, for her to say, "Call me Lisa," but she doesn't.

------

James Wilson intrigues you even before you meet him, because he sounds genuinely surprised when he gets your call; given his reputation, you'd have thought half the hospitals on the East Coast would be pursuing him. When he comes in to meet you, he's good looking in an unstudied, unpolished way, with his puppy-dog brown eyes, unruly fringe, and schoolboy ties, and despite his impressive clinical experience, you get a sense of a man who has yet to make his mark. But you hire him anyway, because you have a good feeling about him, and besides, while PPTH is on the up, you're not exactly beating top oncologists off with a shovel just yet.

He's married, and it's the second time – you gather this because of the slightly bitter crack his wife, Sarah makes about being the newer model, the first time she comes to a hospital function. He's Jewish, like you, but you only know this because he mentions it when you are both working the first Christmas after you hire him.

------

It's a couple of months after you start at PPTH when Greg House is admitted to the ER one night, and discharged a fortnight later with a limp, a 30 day supply of Vicodin and a scowl that could send the cheeriest person scuttling in the other direction. You know his girlfriend, Stacy, slightly – she's a friend of your ex-wife – and you're aware Cuddy is his doctor, but other than that it's just another one of PPTH's less than stellar outcomes.

That is, until Cuddy calls you into her office late one afternoon, and you gather Stacy's gone, and that House is not adapting to his new status as semi-cripple particularly well. This is not, of course, your problem, but you've come to like Cuddy a great deal over the last few months.

And this is how you find yourself on House's doorstep one night, holding a six-pack of beer and with a sinking feeling in your stomach. He's famously acerbic – you automatically discount half of what Stacy's friends say, reasoning that they're biased, but you've noticed the nurses are still complaining about him six weeks after his discharge. All in all, you're more than a little relieved when there's no response to your knock.

You're just turning to leave, when the door creaks open a few inches, and you see a tall figure limping back into the other room. There's a football game on the TV, and the only light comes from the flickering screen. You stand awkwardly in front of him, holding the beer, and say, "I'm James Wilson, Dr Cuddy suggested I drop by," and House looks you over, sighs, says, "Well, James Wilson, you're a better door than a window," takes a beer, and jerks his head at the empty armchair.

And that's all he says all evening, but when you come by again the next week at the same time, he opens the door right away, and he's bought chips, and before a couple of months are out, Sarah's got so used to you being out every Wednesday night she's signed up for an evening class.

------

You hate to see House limping. Whenever you see him in pain, it reminds you of the part you played in bringing that about. You still think you did the right thing, but that doesn't mean it's easy to live with the consequences. So you do what you can for him. You give him a job, for one thing. You know it's what he needs most right now, and besides, you need his skills, if you can only keep him from self-destructing enough so you can actually use them.

Wilson befriends him, at first to help you out, but to your surprise, they hit it off. You wonder if Wilson is lonelier than you realized. You've met his wife a few times now, and you just can't see what they have in common.

------

As you get to know House better, you go to a game once in a while, or when it's out of season, to an occasional concert, normally at the university. He likes the big piano concertos – Tchaikovsky or Rachmaninov, Beethoven maybe – the ones which pit the soloist against the whole orchestra.

You've know House is not a bad pianist himself; he's never played for you, exactly, but sometimes when you arrive at his place he's at the piano and he carries on for a while when you get there. You know he can't play like this though. You watch him listen intently as the notes sparkle and glitter like glacier water churning over alpine rocks and the pianist struggles to reach dry land.

Given a free choice, you always pick baroque music; Vivaldi, Bach, Corelli. You like the structure and repetition; the bright clarity of the sound. It clears your mind and marks out a peaceful space where you don't have to worry about anything.

You work with death every day; a procession through your office of living corpses, skin stretched tight against cheekbones which seem too large for their faces. You listen, reassure, advise. It cheers you up to think the composers of this music are long dead but they have left their music behind for you to listen to. You wonder if anyone will remember James Wilson in three centuries time, and you think, almost certainly not.

------

You watch Allison Cameron walk along the corridors of your hospital and you know she is pregnant before almost anyone else does. You think House must realize, but you're pretty sure his other two team members haven't worked it out yet, diagnosticians though they are.

You're not sure what tipped you off exactly; something about the careful way she holds herself, maybe. Perhaps her recent air of having most of her mind on something other than work.

Or it could be the fact that right this minute, she's throwing up in your executive bathroom, while you rearrange the papers on your desk and pretend you haven't noticed anything amiss.

Presently, she comes back out and sits down silently in the chair across from you, eyes red-rimmed; skin grayish pale under a sheen of sweat, and a look on her face like you might be about to shout at her and if so, she would deserve it

You'd like to say, "It's OK, your secret is safe with me," but you know it's far too risky from a personnel point of view to even hint at an employee's pregnancy before she's told you of it. Especially when you have a strong suspicion the father is your Head of Diagnostic Medicine; her boss.

You're not against the relationship. House has been a whole lot easier to deal with these past six months: no nurses have left due to his delightful comments, no patients have sued in quite some while – well, none that have mentioned him specifically - and the cracks about your cleavage are down to about one a week.

You have been impressed that Cameron can handle him and her job, and that no-one seems to have found out, with the exception of Wilson, who can be trusted to keep a secret.

All the same, Cameron is a good doctor and you were rather hoping to hang onto her when her fellowship ends; in fact, that's why you've called her in today. An Immunology research post has come up and you have the funding for it, as long as you can get a named person to sign up for it within the month. So you tell her you're in no rush for a decision; even though you are, and the funding's good for another year, which is true. Then, you suggest she talks to House. She thanks you and walks out, and you wonder what she'll decide.

------

You encourage House when he shows signs of interest in Cameron; God knows, it's time you get the chance to tweak him about his relationships; you have six years of teasing to make up for. Although tease isn't the right word, really; Sarah never actually said it was your friendship with House that was the final straw, but the fact that she refused point blank to come to another Oncology dinner after he introduced her as "Wilson's main squeeze", does seem significant, in retrospect.

Anyway, the cold front that sweeps through the Diagnostics department after their date, while disappointing, isn't exactly a surprise. You've seen your friend analyze everything to death these last six years, and it was probably too much to expect that he would suddenly suspend disbelief long enough to recognize a possibility when he saw one.

A year or so later, when Cameron's fellowship's coming to an end, something's changed. You have no evidence other than body language, and precious little of that. So it's not until you catch them kissing in the PPTH parking lot, in the cold gray light of a Saturday dawn, that you dare to believe what you've observed these last few weeks. You watch as he slides his hand under her hair, pulling her closer to him, and her arms go round his neck, and you creep to your car, unobserved, and wait in silence until they've disentangled themselves and driven off in House's Corvette.

------

Leah calls you, and after you've hung up, you feel bad, even though it was nice to hear from her, because you always leave it up to her to keep in touch. You could argue that your sister has more time than you do, but it's not true; you know she's always busy running round after her family.

It was a lot easier to keep in touch when you could just drop round there, before you moved to Princeton. You remember being at her place in Baltimore, sitting on an old picnic rug in the yard and laughing at your niece Stella's dogged attempts to walk under her own power. Meanwhile, you keep a watchful eye on Rachel, her older sister, as she adds 'make-up' to a doll's face with an indelible marker pen.

Leah is in the kitchen, fixing lunch, and listening to a phone-in on the radio. The sun is shining; it's a perfect spring day, with that freshness in the air that always gives you a feeling of anticipation. Your mother and father are coming over later, as well as Michael and his boyfriend. Lauren is away abroad again; her new job involves a lot of traveling and you don't see much of her these days.

You are four weeks pregnant and you haven't told anyone yet, not even your boyfriend. Dave is working today – or so he says; you didn't make too much of a fuss because your parents don't like him. You've never been sure whether Leah does either, although she does a better job of keeping her opinions to herself.

You hear the phone ringing inside the house, but think nothing of it, until Leah runs out to the garden with the cordless handset, and passes it to you eagerly. You watch your sister pick Stella up and dust the grass off her diapers, as the person on the other end of the line delivers the news that, until a few weeks ago, would have been the most thrilling thing you could have heard.

You take the recommended approach: you sound very pleased with their offer; tell them you'll think it over and call them back tomorrow, when you've had time to talk about it with your family, and then you hang up.

Leah looks over at you. She is nearly bouncing with excitement. She has always taken a keen interest in your career, right from when you got your place at med school. You remember opening the letter from Michigan, with her looking over your shoulder, in the bedroom you shared up until you left home.

Now, she says, "That was them, wasn't it, Leese, the hospital in Princeton?"

You say they offered you the post of Chief of Medicine, trying to inject some enthusiasm into your tone. Leah hugs you, one-armed, because she's still holding Stella, and Rachel runs up to join in, not wanting to be left out, even though she has no idea what all the fuss is about.

You wish you felt more excited but all you can think about is what Dave's reaction is going to be. You know he doesn't want to move house, and just lately, he keeps making sniping remarks about your career. It doesn't help that you were on call the last three weekends; you have a lot of time to make up for all the interviews you attended.

When you met Dave last year, at one of Michael's parties – your younger brother loves entertaining, and will throw a party on any excuse – he was just starting out as a garden designer. He already had a good business doing landscaping and taking care of clients' gardens, but he wanted a more creative role. His design business is growing, gradually, but not as fast as he would like, and he still spends a lot more time cutting hedges than he does creating prizewinning gardens. There are too many garden designers in the area already, and you fear that he doesn't have the marketing skills he's going to need to make an impact.

You don't yet know exactly what package Princeton-Plainsboro are going to offer you, but the initial figure they just mentioned on the phone was eye-watering enough. You quickly do the math; it is just over twice as much as Dave's annual turnover.

It is an exhausting afternoon. Leah lets slip your news as soon as your parents walk in the door and they tell Michael and Stevie. Everyone bombards you with congratulations, questions and unsolicited advice. Even your brother-in-law looks up from his football game long enough to make a disparaging comment about New Jersey. It's gone eight o'clock by the time you extricate yourself.

Dave is sitting at the kitchen table when you get in, still in his work clothes. His light blond cropped hair is spotlighted by the ceiling fixture. He's reading yesterday's paper, and the remains of a meal are on a plate to one side. The thin layer of grease on the food makes you feel queasy.

"Sorry I'm so late," you apologize, "Leah insisted I stay for dinner."

"That's OK," he says, not looking up, "I only got in half an hour ago myself."

You pull out a chair; it screeches annoyingly on the stone flags. You can feel a headache coming on. You sit down opposite him, and gently take the paper from his hands and fold it up.

"We need to talk," you tell him.

---

A week later, and you have accepted Princeton-Plainsboro's offer, holding out long enough that they upgrade the car from a Chevy to a Mercedes and add another ten thousand to the salary.

Dave is gone. You were going to tell him you were pregnant; honestly, you were, but he blindsided you by dumping you before you got a chance to mention it. You could tell by the carefully rehearsed way he told you your relationship was over, that he'd been planning it for some time. There is no way on this earth you are telling him about the baby now; how desperate, never mind disorganized, would that make you look?

You spend another few days thinking up unlikely scenarios in which you move to Princeton, still pregnant, and somehow convince your new bosses that becoming a single parent will have no impact on the incredibly challenging job you have agreed to do. You know full well how gleefully the press would seize on the story; the first female chief of medicine in the country, asking for maternity leave.

On Friday, you reach a decision. You tell yourself you are putting off an unpleasant procedure for no good reason and if you delay any longer, it will just get worse. Because you are a doctor, the clinic agrees to let you take both sets of pills at home, as long as you agree to report for check ups at appropriate points. All you can think of through the obligatory counseling session is how disappointed your parents would be if they knew, and you vow then and there that they never will.

By the time you arrive in Princeton, the physical effects are pretty much gone. You don't tell anyone, apart from, bizarrely, Greg House, whom you run into at the tennis club one Saturday and wind up spending the evening with. It's only a long time afterwards that you realize you picked as your confessor the one person who wouldn't judge and wouldn't sympathize. You don't deserve sympathy.

------

Cameron comes back to see you the following week. She looks a lot better. In fact, she looks great. Her skin is pink and healthy and her hair is tied back in a shiny ponytail. She tells you that she's talked to House, and she's going to have the baby.

"And he's OK with that?" you ask, in what you hope is a neutral tone.

She meets your eye briefly and looks away. "He's as OK as he ever is," she says, shortly.

You do what you can for her. You know she must be feeling awkward; it would be stressful enough to have to confess to your colleagues you're dating your boss without having to spring the news of a pregnancy on them at the same time. You find her a temporary job in the research department. You look at her scans with her and say all the right things; you've had plenty of practice these last ten years. You have a hunch Cameron doesn't have any female friends, or not in Princeton, anyway.

You can't put a name to the feeling you have when you see her with House. He is protective of her, especially when he thinks no-one else can see, and the expression on his face when he looks at her is like he's wondering what he did to deserve this, and how he can possibly avoid screwing it up.

What the two of them do in their own time is no business of yours. They're your employees, and as long as they do their jobs, there's no problem. You come across him and Cameron in the lab early one morning; her white coat is half on and half off her shoulders, and she is pressed up between him and the metal counter as he gently kisses her neck; he has a proprietal hand on the barely perceptible swell of her belly. And right then, you could cheerfully kill them both. You go back to your office and when your secretary gets in ten minutes late, you tell her she's fired.

------

You wonder when House and Cameron are going to stop dancing around the fact that she's pregnant. It's not like even House's awesome powers of denial can wish out of existence something with a predictable timeline. The four of you had dinner the night before last at Cuddy's and you were really tempted to say, "Congratulations!" just to see what their reaction would be, but you didn't quite dare.

------

You know you should clean more. It just seems so pointless, cleaning surfaces and hoovering so you can do it all over again a few days later. Now and again you think of getting a replacement for Marie, your cleaner who moved away last year, but after the experience with Alfredo you're really reluctant to have anyone else working for you.

The thing that made you most angry, the time House calmly let himself in with your spare key, was he would have discovered your secret slatternliness. Oh, your place is tidy enough on the surface, but opening any drawer or cupboard invariably results in a slide of its contents onto the floor. Your mother would be ashamed.

The weekends are the worst. During the week, you get in early and stay late, and if it means you are only at home for a quick piece of toast at midnight and to hurl some clothes in the washer before you catch a few hours' sleep, that's just a commendable dedication to duty. But the weekends…you can't lie in; if you stay asleep until 7am, that constitutes a lie-in, anyway.

By the time you've been for a run, had a shower and got dressed there's still an awful lot of Sunday to get through. All your family is in Baltimore, and while it's not that far from Princeton, it's not so near that you can drop in and see them on a whim. You do have a few friends, but no-one you can invite round spontaneously, and so as a result, because you're too busy to make plans in advance – and you hate cancelling on people just because something's come up at work – it is mostly you and the TIVO and the pile of Country Living magazines.

------

This is the third Sunday in a row you've spent at work; or maybe the fourth; who's counting? You don't in fact have any patients this weekend who are critical enough to require a visit, but you go and see everyone anyway, making a small adjustment to some meds for Mr Hanson, who has end-stage colon cancer and who always tells you you ought to go home and see your family; you spend lunchtime playing cards with the younger sister of one of your teenage patients and while away the afternoon doing paperwork.

Come seven o'clock, you can't think of any more excuses to stay at the hospital, and you head home. You can tell things are really over this time because of the effort Julie's making to be polite. You used to argue all the time, over relatively important matters – the hours you spend at work, whether you care about your patients more than her, and trivial ones like the wet towel you left on the bathroom floor last time you took a shower, or the fact that you did only intend to have one drink with House, not half a dozen.

So the fact she's suddenly asking about your day and offering you a choice of what you want for dinner is unusual, to say the least. Something's changed, and you think you know what. You wonder what he's like; is he more attentive? More macho? Maybe he wants kids?

------

It's all such an effort, this keeping up of appearances. You love clothes, jewelry, makeup, but the body maintenance, the grooming – sometimes it feels like a treadmill you can never get off.

However, the compensation is that as far as clothes go, you can have pretty much anything you want. Well, anything you can find in Quakerbridge Mall; or these days, more likely, online at three in the morning. You are not sure where all your shopping time has gone; most likely eaten up with the endless legal paperwork that is part and parcel of running a large teaching hospital. You would swear it has started to reproduce on your desk.

Things are getting desperate this week. You don't like to wear the same suit twice to a board meeting and there's one coming up on Thursday night. It's not that you want them to think they're overpaying you; and you'd like to hope what you say matters more than how you look while you're saying it. But still, in a room full of men you are well aware what your main advantage is, and frankly, it would be stupid not to work it.

You place a call to Elena at Lord & Taylor and make an appointment for nine this evening; the hospital's normally pretty quiet by then. Elena arrives promptly as arranged, wheeling a rack of clothes behind her. She is tall and willowy; you admire her cinched silhouette. You draw the blinds but you don't lock the door; no-one's likely to come looking for you at this hour of the day. She has brought clothes by all your favorite designers and a selection of shoes and bags. It's in her interests to give you exactly what you want, when you want it; she works on commission and you suspect you're probably her best customer.

You start with one of the Marc Jacobs suits; she has it in a cherry red – good for confrontational situations; lord knows, while House continues to work for you, you can guarantee one of those at least twice a week - and also in a soft moss green, which brings out the color of your eyes. There's something satisfying about the whispery texture of these expensive fabrics as they slide from their velvet-covered hangers; something that turns you on.

You think of your mother and her carefully cleaned and pressed chain store separates. You know she thinks you spend a lot – meaning too much - on clothes; well, she'd just die if she knew the actual amount. You did some calculations when you were getting an insurance quote last year and were shocked but not altogether surprised, when you realized you had the sartorial equivalent of at least a top of the range Maserati stashed away in your walk-in wardrobe.

You are just moving on from the Marc Jacobs to the Ghost dresses Elena has brought, when you hear a noise behind you. A noise that sounds a lot like someone pushing the door open.

"When you said you were going shopping tonight, it didn't occur to me you meant _in your office_…" says a familiar voice. Elena gives Wilson the once over and obviously likes what she sees. Nearly all women do, you've noticed.

"Is there something I can help you with, Dr Wilson?" you ask, in the most formal tone you can muster, considering that you are only wearing your slip and a pair of high heels.

"Nothing that can't wait," he replies, cheerfully refusing to take the hint, and sitting down with the relaxed expression of a man whose favorite show has just come on TV.

Elena quickly selects a dress and brings it over; you raise your arms above your head and she drops it onto you; the brush of the silky fabric against your bare skin is like the promise of a kiss. The dress is a sheer midnight blue, cut on the bias, with some beading around the fancy neckline, and it fits like a dream, clinging around the bust and flaring out a little at the skirt, but not too much. There are a couple of options for a jacket; a matching one, which falls to the hips, or a contrasting one in a bouclé fabric, which is cropped and tailored.

"That one," Wilson says, appreciatively, before you're even done buttoning, "You'll knock the board dead."

You ignore him. Who asked for his opinion?

"I'll take both of them," you say, decisively, undoing the jacket and handing it to Elena to hang back on the rack.

You tell her you'll have both the suits you tried on, as well. You won't bother with any of the accessories she's brought with her, today; there's no way you're fiddling around with heels and bags with James in a ringside seat. And you think, guiltily, that the large selection you have at home, many still in their original wrappers, will probably yield something suitable anyway.

You watch Elena put all the clothes back carefully on the rail, take out her tiny leather-bound notepad and write down what you owe. You don't need to pay now; you have an account and she sends you a bill at the end of every month.

------

One of the major attractions of the job at PPTH was the seat on the board it came with, but you weren't looking forward to the actual board meetings. You can't think of anything worse than spending an evening once a month, or at budget time, more often than that, talking over the legal hassles and administrative minutiae which the operation of a large teaching hospital generates in such plentiful quantities.

Over the years though, you have come to appreciate the major side benefit of the PPTH meetings, which is that you get to watch Lisa in her power suits doing what she does best; directing the whole gathering down to the smallest detail, while letting everyone else think they're in charge.

She's got the new red outfit on tonight; the one she picked out on Tuesday. It really suits her; it makes her dark hair look even glossier and contrasts with her attractive complexion. It occurs to you haven't told her that your divorce from Julie is final yet, and you're not sure why.

------

The meeting finishes earlier than normal; you suspect more than one of the board are hoping to get back in time to catch the last half hour of the baseball. You're just shuffling your papers together, when you realize you and James are alone in the room. He gets up and comes over to where you're sitting. You notice for the first time today how tired he looks.

"It's not very late," he says, diffidently, hands on hips, "Would you like to go for dinner somewhere?"

You look up at him, and ask, "Won't Julie wonder where you are?"

"It's none of her business, any more," he says, and that's when you notice his wedding ring is gone.

------

Over dinner, you discuss Cameron's pregnancy. She just told Chase and Foreman this week; Foreman doesn't seem very surprised, but Chase was still looking completely stupefied last time you saw him.

"I think House is actually pleased, in his own way," James says. You're not so sure, but yeah, you'd better hope so, for everybody's sake.

"I had IVF last year; well, I had a try at it, anyway," you tell him. You're not quite sure why these words have come out of your mouth, and you suddenly feel embarrassed.

James looks uncomfortable and fiddles with his silverware, tracing patterns on the expensive tablecloth with his fork.

"I figured," he says, softly, "And no, House didn't say anything, before you ask."

You remember sitting across from James in another restaurant, last year, and you wonder if he figured that out, too, but you don't quite dare ask. You used an anonymous donor in the end, despite what House said; the whole process was so artificial anyway, you didn't see the need to complicate things by dragging someone you knew into it.

"I'm sorry it didn't work out for you," he says, and this time it's your turn to look at the tablecloth. You kind of knew in your heart of hearts it wasn't going to succeed. You are a realist, and the statistics were against you. The majority of fertility treatments don't succeed; that's not a fact they rush to tell you when you sign up for them, given the cost.

"It was probably for the best," you admit – if you say it enough times, you'll believe it – and you smile, determinedly, and say, "Shall we have dessert?"

------

You don't want to make assumptions, but the signals Lisa's sending out tonight are pretty unmistakable, and no-one knows you're here; what's the harm, you think, trying to convince yourself you're not making a terrible mistake. You kiss her in her kitchen, while the kettle boils unheeded on the stovetop, and there's a lot of steam by the time you break apart. She tastes of lipstick, and caramel from the dessert she ate earlier, and she feels smaller in your arms than you expected. You've never even hugged her before tonight, never mind anything else, and at the moment you can't quite work out why.

------

It's obvious that James isn't sure he should be here, doing this, so you cover your own uncertainty, because you've wanted him for a long time now, but you didn't realize quite how much until tonight. You don't give him a minute to change his mind; you abandon the coffee-making and get straight to the point, dropping to your knees right there in the kitchen and taking him out of his pants and into your mouth.

------

Good God, Lisa sure doesn't mess about when she's decided she wants something, you think, and you almost burst out laughing, because you definitely weren't expecting this. Her warm tongue feels so incredible on your cock, though, that you flip straight from amusement to worry that you'll come all over the beautiful stone flags in her kitchen, before you've had the chance to find out what else she's really good at.

------

You're lying on your bed, and James has paused to admire your underwear, which is cherry red silk with a black lace trim; "These new for the board meeting, as well?" he asks, to which you reply, defensively, "No!", and then more truthfully, "Yes," and he leans down and tongues your nipples gently through the soft fabric, making you wriggle and squirm beneath him.

James soon figures out that you don't want, or need, to be in charge all the time, especially behind the closed door of your bedroom. Later, when he's got you pinned down with his strong hands, and you're begging him to finish you off, you can see a glimpse of something steelier behind his familiar sweet smile. He keeps you on the edge for as long as he can manage, until you're clutching at the sheets with sweaty hands and arching your back, incoherent sounds coming from your raw throat, in the vain hope you can make his tongue work faster.

------

House amazed you enough by going through with the wedding; he even avoided the shouting match with his father you'd assumed was inevitable. But he's really stunned you now with what he's just said. You simply can't have heard him correctly.

"You want to come off the Vicodin?" you clarify, pushing your plate away, and deciding that you may as well abandon the idea of actually eating any lunch today.

"Not want. I need to do it," he says, curtly, "I don't want my kid to have an addict for a father. And it needs to be now, because Allison's not going to want me to look after as well as a baby."

---

That's all very commendable, you think, a week later, when you're tiredly waiting for his latest bout of vomiting to stop so you can hook him up to another IV line, but this gets old real fast. You're sitting at your kitchen table, the one you and Julie bought together and you've never got around to getting rid of. You're attempting to read your email on your laptop, because although your job is in theory covered, you don't really trust your staff not to forget anything important.

It feels weird at your apartment now; sort of empty, even though you and House haven't left the building for the last few days. You spoke to Lisa last night; you told her you missed her. It's true; you've got used to going to bed with her and waking up with her. You're not sure if you're officially living together or not – you need to have that conversation sometime, but there's no rush – but she's given you sole use of one of her wardrobes, which for Lisa Cuddy, woman of a thousand jacket options, is quite a concession.

---

House says he's fit to drive; you don't agree, and it's late by the time you've dropped him off and gone back to tidy up your apartment, so it's not in too much of a state next time you need to use it. Lisa's place is quiet and dark when you let yourself in the front door, but she's sitting up in bed reading when you walk into the bedroom.

"About time," she says, putting the book down on the nightstand, followed by the glasses you're not supposed to know she wears, "How's House?"

"Looks like a truck ran him over, but basically OK; I, however, feel like I've just done three back to back on-calls."

You sit wearily on the edge of the bed, and Lisa grabs your t-shirt, pulls you down to her and kisses you enthusiastically.

"Mmm, guess you missed me then?" you say, round her tongue in your mouth, and you slip a hand under her short cotton nightie and up her thigh.

"Yeah," she says, pulling back slightly, "The vibrator got some action." She grins, and you realize you're blushing. You're still not used to how direct she is. You can't imagine any of your ex-wives saying that.

"Don't be jealous; it's a very poor substitute," she says, and "Oh-" as you run your thumb gently over her clit; you slip two fingers inside her and she works herself on your hand; she's drenched.

"Hold that thought," you say, getting up so you can quickly strip your clothes off and get into bed. And as you slide into her, and lean back down to kiss her again, you think you'd like to prolong this, because it's the most at home you've felt in years, but you're just so bone tired, it's all you can do to follow the gentle rhythm she sets, until you both come.

------

You and James are the first people to see Emily, other than her parents and the maternity ward staff. Allison looks so young, with her dark hair hanging down over the shoulders of her pale green bathrobe, and she's very pale, but she exudes an exhausted happiness.

Allison asks if you want to hold the baby, and you do, and as House passes her carefully to you, fussing with the blanket she's wrapped in, you can kind of see that this will work for them; they'll manage in their own way, like everyone does.

You marvel at how Emily can look exactly like House, and yet still be cute, but you keep your thoughts to yourself. You can do being an auntie; you have a good track record there. And you tell yourself this is the start of something and not the end.

------

House has done his research very thoroughly. You wouldn't have expected anything less, you think, as you leaf through the folder of notes and printouts from the internet, with annotations in an impatient hand. You can't fault his reasoning; his leg's definitely not getting any better, he's having more trouble getting about, and the pain management regime you worked out for him when he finally kicked the Vicodin can only do so much.

What he doesn't know is that Allison came to see you just over a fortnight ago, on a very similar mission. You wish they would just bloody well talk to each other, but it's always been easier to go through you, so you look up, and say, "On this evidence, Johnson at Mount Sinai looks like the best option," and he nods, adding, "The guy in New Mexico has been getting good results, but I don't want to spend weeks down there doing rehab."

"Are you sure you can go through with this?" you ask, because someone has to.

"No," he says, "But I'm going to anyway."

------

Neither of you can remember the last time you took a vacation. You leave it up to James to choose the location, because you have to put in so much extra time getting the hospital to a state where you can even consider being away for a week, you haven't got the energy left to look at guidebooks and websites.

He picks Kraków, because he did an internship at one of the hospitals there once and has always wanted to go back, anyway, he says, at least the time difference will stop you calling PPTH quite so often.

You don't want to visit Auschwitz and he's already been, but you do go to the Jewish cultural centre in what used to be the ghetto. You see an exhibition of photographs of Jewish gravesites in various villages and towns around Poland, as they are now, neglected and overgrown, and it's strangely affecting. You consider your own faith, or lack of it, which has never been a particularly big deal to you, and you wonder if it would have been different if it was a big deal to someone else.

Over an indifferent dinner in a dimly-lit local restaurant in Kazimierz, James asks you to marry him. He's asked before, twice, but both times you said no. You've never been anyone's fourth choice before, and you're not intending to start now.

Tonight, however, you feel differently. You think about how short life is and how lucky you are to have found someone you don't have to put on a big show for and who gets how important your work is to you; someone who knows his own mind but doesn't necessarily expect you to agree with him.

You think for a moment that there are tears in his eyes when you say yes, but then you decide it's just the lack of light in the restaurant playing tricks on you.

------

"We could do it now," you suggest, suddenly struck by the thought that Lisa's courage to do this might have evaporated by the time you get back to Princeton and all the small hassles of everyday life. It's not that you're not sure of her; you know she loves you, but you know it's hard for her to make this commitment, especially with your terrible track record.

------

You've never had a mental picture of yourself getting married, which is probably just as well, you think, because it definitely wouldn't have involved sheltering from the pouring rain under the portico of a synagogue in a strange city, wearing a dress you bought this morning and the only pair of decent shoes you have with you.

The rabbi, smiling broadly, tells you in a strong but easily comprehensible accent that it's the first wedding he's done this year. You actually like that you don't know anyone here apart from James; it makes it feel more like a proper, serious, commitment and less like a party. The witnesses are two elderly women in dark clothes and you can't talk to them because they don't speak English and you've only learnt to say 'thank you' and 'excuse me' in Polish so far; one of them lends you a headscarf, because you've forgotten to bring anything to cover your head.

The ceremony is brief and you have little idea what's going on – you don't think you've been in a synagogue since Leah got married, and that was nearly sixteen years ago, but the rabbi steers you both skillfully through the responses, and gives you a wink when it's all done. It stops raining for just long enough for James to get a random passer by to take your picture with the disposable camera he's just produced from his jacket.

You resist the urge to ring Leah, as otherwise you'll arrive back home to find your mother on your doorstep freaking out because you didn't tell her first, but then you think that she won't be upset with you too long when it dawns on her that at least you finally got around to getting married, and to a Jewish doctor, to boot.

------

You know House is going to figure it out, even though you don't say anything, and neither of you have worn your rings at work. Sure enough, you find him on your doorstep one Saturday night, holding a bottle of fifteen year old malt, and with a smile on his face – the one he always has when he's solved a puzzle that's been bothering him.

"Mazel tov," he says, "I know my speech was bad last time, but did you actually have to elope?"

"Yeah," you tell him, keeping your voice down because Lisa, quite understandably, dislikes mentions of your exes, "Julie's mother didn't speak to me for a full twelve months afterwards."

"And that was a bad thing?" House asks.

You invite him in, and the three of you have a drink together, before he goes back to see if Allison's still awake; he says she owes him fifty bucks.

------

You know something's wrong as soon as you wake up; it's too quiet; unnaturally quiet. James was complaining of a pain in his side last night; you just thought he'd overdone it playing squash the day before and told him to take some Tylenol before you went to bed. He's breathing, but only just; you take the pulse in his neck and it's weak and thready. You don't want to recognize these symptoms but you do. You call an ambulance, and page House.

------

You want to tell House you understand now, but the pain inside is burning from red to white-hot to black, and it's quickly spiraling wider to take in anything and everything and there's no space left for you. People move around you, coming in and out of focus like figures in a dream. Lisa is leaning over you, and you want to speak, but you can't. You want to tell her how much you love her. You want to say goodbye.

------

You are so angry with James for leaving you. You want to remember all the good things about him; how kind he was; his sense of humor; his deft touch with young patients, but inside you feel like a lost child, who looks up in the middle of a crowded supermarket to find themselves abandoned in a forest of unrecognizable faces. Everything's too loud, too bright, and too much effort.

You get through the days somehow, waking, dressing, going to the hospital, eating and sleeping, and all these activities seem completely pointless. You're avoiding Greg as much as you can; the two of you are bickering now worse than ever, and there's a sharper edge to his comments; you know it's just his own grief talking, but you can't deal with it right now.

The only person you can bear to be around is Allison, who doesn't try to make you talk or cheer you up; she just does quiet, practical things like bringing some groceries round or weeding the garden. She's also the only one who mentions James casually in conversation, even when you can't, and for that you're grateful.

------

Emily is turning into quite a reasonable tennis player. You paid for some classes for her fourteenth birthday, and now, a year and a half later, you've got into the habit of spending Saturday mornings playing with her at the club you belong to. It gets the weekend off to a good start; it means you have a reason not to go into the office to catch up with work, and you know Allison likes the time alone with Greg to read the papers and have a late breakfast. Well, that's what she claims they're doing.

You watch Emily run to the corner of the court to retrieve a couple of balls so she can serve. Her vivid auburn hair is darkening a little with age, but it's still curly like her father's. She's got his height too, but her quiet self-assurance is all Allison's.

Over lunch, you ask her about school, and you discuss the trip to Mexico she's planning with her friends in spring break. You know, because Allison's told you, that she's stopped talking to her mother about this sort of thing. You are pretty sure it's a temporary phase, but you do your best to find out, as subtly as you can, a bit more about the friends and whether any of them's a boyfriend.

"It's OK, Auntie Lisa," she says, laughing, because she sees right through you, "You don't have to give me the contraception lecture."

Nonplussed, you go back to eating your sandwich and decide that Greg can give her the talk; you'll stick to the tennis coaching.

------

You have been alone so long that it seems normal, and you don't even have much of a pang any more when you see couples walking hand in hand down the summer streets.

It doesn't matter. You have the hospital; the hospital that relies on you for its smooth running, and all the people who come in sick, and more often than not, leave cured. You have Allison, and Greg, and Emily, who you sometimes think you're closer to than any of your 'real' nieces and nephews.

You have the memory of James.

It's enough.

FIN.


End file.
